Four Women Scientists Honored for Early Career Accomplishments in Psychology

The American Association for Psychological Science has announced the six winners of the 2011 Janet Taylor Spence Award for Transformative Early Career Contributions. Four of the six winners are women.

In a statement, the association said, “The award recognizes the creativity and innovative work of promising scientists who represent the bright future ahead for psychological science. It places these recipients among the brightest minds in our field.”

The four women who are being honored are:

Sian Beilock, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Chicago. She has examined how stress contributes to poor performance. She is the author of Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To.

Dr. Beilock is a graduate of the University of California, San Diego and holds Ph.D.s in psychology and kinesiology from Michigan State University.

Naomi I. Eisenberger is an assistant professor of social psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles.  She is director of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory as well as co-director of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in psychobiology and a Ph.D. in social psychology from UCLA.

Wendy B. Mendes is Sarlo/Ekman Associate Professor of Emotion at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine. Her research examines how emotions, stress, and motivation are experienced in the body and how they influence behavior and decision making.

In 2003 Dr. Mendes completed her Ph.D. in social psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and then taught at Harvard University for six years.

Daphna Shohamy is an assistant professor of psychology at Columbia University in New York City. She earned a Ph.D. in psychology in 2003 from Rutgers University.

Her research is focused on using neuroscience to understand how people learn from experience and how they use what they learn to guide their decisions.